


What it Takes to Be a Dad

by Pigeonsplotinsecrecy



Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Owen Strand's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29667534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy/pseuds/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy
Summary: There are so many words that TK is dying to tell his dad.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 77





	What it Takes to Be a Dad

“I’m going to be a dad,” Owen said, and it’s a slight that Owen didn’t even know he was making, which was the worst kind of slight because Owen wasn’t trying to hurt T.K. He wasn’t thinking of T.K. at all. He was thinking of the new kid he might have in a few months, one who wasn’t tarnished by mistakes of the past. T.K. got the appeal of a fresh start. Sometimes, no matter how hard he tried to be happy, he wondered if he’d always be in the way-a reminder of old haunts.

Some reminders were better off dead. T.K. tried that. He’d tried killing himself. He’d tried destroying the parts of himself that he didn’t like with pills and booze. He’d nearly died. He’d gotten better. He’d fought to be sober. He’d fought to not ruin the good things that he’d started in Austin. It was hard fighting all the time. It took so much energy, and sometimes T.K. didn’t know what the point was. For all the fighting he did, did anything ever change? Would he ever stop feeling like a seven-year-old who wanted his hero to put him first?

The words didn’t leave T.K.’s head. If he told his dad about how he felt, his dad would think that he was being silly. Owen would tell T.K. that nothing was going to change and that T.K. would always be his son, but the issue was that nothing was going to change. T.K. had held out hope all his life that something would be different, but every time he thought that he and his dad were making progress, they slid back into the same bad patterns that agonized T.K. and made him feel like he’d never have the love he deserved.

T.K. had gone over a lot of scenarios in his head. He’d imagined being able to spit everything he was unable to say out. He’d collected the words he wanted to say for so many years, stuffed them into the back of his brain. They were all in mint condition, untouched and looking just as new as they did when he first gathered them. It was a museum of artifacts that he didn’t want to have anymore. But he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t let them go because they were precious to him, even if they were underappreciated.

“You left me,” he wanted to scream. “You left me and you never came back. I had to be the one to force my way into your life. My whole future was wanting to be close to you, and I was never able to get what I wanted because it doesn’t serve you.”

He wanted to say, “You only love me as far as it’s convenient for you.” Because he’d driven himself crazy trying to figure out what his relationship with his father really was, but he knew that was how it felt.

T.K. imagined his father saying, “Son, that’s not true.” _Son,_ sometimes the word made him feel special, but other times, it made him feel like shit.

Without holding back, T.K. would say, “It is true. You’ve always put your career ahead of me. Ahead of mom. You’re going to put it ahead of this baby too. Because you refuse to admit that you’re still fucked up. You play hero, but you run away like a fucking coward when things get too hard with the people you should fight hardest for.” He wanted to yell so that Owen had no choice but hear him because it drove him crazy as he kept trying to say the same thing but it never came out in a way that Owen understood.

Owen would probably try to brush T.K.’s words off, but T.K. wouldn’t let him. For once, he would get the words he was dying to say out. “I’ve lived my whole life trying to be like you. I thought if I could model myself after the man that everyone kept saying was so great, I would be that great too. But I’ve become like you in all the wrong ways. I’ve become self-absorbed and reckless. I do things that aren’t like me because I’ve trained myself to be just like you.” He would tell Owen, “I’m tired of trying to force a relationship with you while you only give an effort when I’m on death’s door.”

T.K. wanted to ask, “What will it take for me to be enough for you?” The answer, he knew, would never satisfy him because whatever Owen said, T.K. would never feel like enough. The words didn’t matter. They were pennies being thrown into empty wells. Owen could say he loved T.K. all he wanted, but until he decided to start acting like a dad, T.K. would always have his doubts. There’d always be a part of him that would think it was too late to be the son his dad needed him to be. He couldn’t help but feel like the mistake that Owen had to love just because he was a mistake that Owen had created.

With a voice that never wavered, he would say, “I’m not the problem here. I’ve done what I could. I haven’t been perfect, but I’ve fought to keep you in my life, and at what cost?”

He wanted to look his dad in the eyes and say, “You don’t get to be a father just when it makes you feel good or like father of the year. You have to my dad all the time. You have to put the effort in, even when you don’t get anything out of it. Real dad’s don’t have shifts. They don’t just take their world’s best dads hats off at the end of the day. When you make the decision to have a kid, they don’t stop being your kid.” He knew that he could never say all that, not if he wanted a semblance of security with his dad, but it would feel so good to take the shiny film off all those words he kept in mint condition.

Most of all, T.K. longed to say, “You say that you’re going to be a dad, but don’t forget that you could’ve been mine.” His voice would shake as he said, “You still can.”


End file.
